The Ocean's Call
by PrincessOfTheNight93
Summary: When Eren and Armin free a frighted mermaid named Mikasa from a fishing net, they swear to keep her existence a secret from everyone else in their village. As the three grow closer and Mikasa find herself returning to their forbidden surface more and more often, the boys find it harder to keep their friend and her unknown world hidden from those who would seek to exploit it.


The black-tailed mermaid was the first out of the group to protest to what Sasha was ensuring her would be a 'great' time. If there was one thing that had been drilled into all five of their heads since they were young, it was to spend as little time as possible on the surface. Go up, take a breath and they stay the hell away from it until you needed you breathe again. And really, that was only in dire situations. They had caves and air pockets all over the place that were more convenient and faster than swimming all the way to the top of the water. So, the situation her four friends were currently trying to drag her into was an act of defiance, and nothing more.

"That's not a good idea," Mikasa told Sasha bluntly, whipping her black fins under her and standing upright in the water. Sasha groaned.

"You're no fun!" Mikasa gave the mermaid with the chocolate-colored tail an imploring look.

"Sasha, my father says-"

"Yeah, because you're Daddy's Little Girl, aren't you, Mikasa?"

"My father is the King, Ymir," Mikasa told her dryly. "His word is a little more substantial than yours." Ymir smirked at her, whipping by her face and tickling her nose with the edge of her russet flipper. Mikasa swatted her tail away in irritation.

"A King with a piece of coral stuck where the sun don't shine, and a Princess that bends over backwards to kiss his tailfin. That's a winning monarchy we have here, I'm telling you." Her brown eyes moved over to a blonde-haired mermaid with a royal blue tail and eyes a few feet away. "We're fucked, eh, Historia?" The blonde just rolled her eyes.

"Knock it off, Ymir."

"That sounds like jealousy, Ymir," laughed the only merman in the group, a man with extremely short hair and a copper tail.

"The fuck would I ever want to rule this kingdom for, Connie?" Ymir snapped at him. "All it amounts to is a few merfolk. Nothing else besides the dolphins even acknowledge we exist. Useless stress for nothing."

"Guys!" Sasha whined from the sidelines of the argument. "Come on! It'll be fun!" Ymir shrugged, dropping her attitude pretty quickly, but that was normal for her.

"I'm game."

"Me too," Connie added. Historia was the only one that wasn't going to blatantly ignore Mikasa. Typical, really. That happened every time Connie or Sasha wanted to do something stupid that was completely against all the laws her father had put in place. And most of the time, they dragged Ymir along. And Ymir would drag Historia along, so it looked like Mikasa was the killjoy.

"I don't know, Ymir," Historia muttered. "That seems _really _stupid." Ymir grinned at her.

"Don't make me seduce you," she threatened, her voice taking on an awkwardly suggestive tone. "I know your weakness."

"Ugh," Connie complained. "You two need to get a room."

"Fuck you."

"I'll count!" Sasha declared, getting into position on an outcropping of rock. Mikasa sighwd as the rest of them followed her example. She turned her black eyes to the surface above them and couldn't see a boat anywhere. With a groan, she joined them. The second Sasha counted down to one, five sleek, streamlined bodies cut through the water, racing toward the surface. Mikasa was the first to break the surface, and the last one descend back into the water, as she was able to jump almost double what the other four could. The five friends skimmed along the surfaced of the ocean, jumping at intervals. As much as it was strictly forbidden to do things like this, Mikasa did honestly find it exhilarating. There was nothing quite like riding the waves that constantly churned the overhead to their ocean home. Finally, Connie ran out of stamina first, and all of them sunk back into the blue-green water.

After a while, the group broke up. Ymir and Histora went off to do something that probably demanded privacy, and Connie and Sasha wandered off to find food via raiding the fishing nets scattered along the coast that the humans set up overnight. Mikasa made her way in the opposite direction for several minutes, when she suddenly heard some very distressed noises in the water. She followed them until she found the source: there were two dolphins.

The smaller of the two, clearly just a baby, was writhing, tangled in a fishing net while its mother hung around the outside helplessly, trying to nudge the young one free of the tendrils. There was a million warning bells going off in Mikasa's head as she made her way over to the trapped dolphin. Going near a net was the dumbest thing a mermaid could do – it was why she'd never risk robbing them for a free meal. It was the easiest thing in the world to get tangled in them. However, she wasn't going to just swim away from a situation like this. She had no idea how long they'd been there, and a baby's lings were nowhere near as strong as it's parent's.

Quickly, Mikasa found the entrance and lowered herself into the net with great care. She placed a hand on either side of the young dolphin's head, trying to calm it down long enough to unwrap the rope from it's nuzzle. When she succeeded, she moved it the tail, taking great care to beat away some of the net drifting too close to her own tail with a kick. The second she touched it, the dolphin made another panic chirp. The mother immediately forced her way between Mikasa and the baby, sending the mermaid tumbling back into the net.

She could feel a few cords wrap around the base of her tail, where her fins met, but she ignored it, moving back to the dolphin. Before the mother could get and angrier, Mikasa undid the last loop around the baby's tail and it took off toward the entrance that she had created. For a moment, the mermaid tore her eyes away from the opening and to her black tail. She began kicking it forcefully, as more of the netting fell around her shoulders. Mikasa tried to twist away from it, but only succeeded in getting herself more wrapped up

That was when the panic set in. Before she knew what she was doing, Mikasa was tearing and thrashing around in the confined of the ropes, until she was too tired to move and too entangled to have any idea where she could even begin to free herself. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to center her thoughts. Whipping around like an idiot was only making the situation ten times worse. Mikasa looked upward and could see where the net was anchored to a rock. She might not have been able to get out of it right at that moment, but she could at least take it with her. She swam upward, wincing where the ropes were cutting into her scales until she got to the surface and untied the knot that held the rope around a rock.

The second she was free, Mikasa took off, moving as quickly away from the scene as her tail would carry her. She was already exhausted from all the fighting she did, but was going to move until she couldn't any longer. Much sooner than she wanted to, she felt the fatigue set in and she found a shallow cover to rest in. She pulled herself onto a flat rock, and went to sleep almost instantly.

When Mikasa woke up, she felt suspiciously dry - the sun was uncomfortable on her warm skin. Slowly, she rolled over into the shallow water, groaning slightly at the painful the cords wrapped around her fin. The mermaid slipped under the water to temporarily escape the sun's rays, but felt too exhausted to go very far. She knew the she has slept through the night, but her body was still very weak and it ached where the net was especially tight. A bitter taste filed her mouth as she pulled herself back up onto her makeshift bed.

They couldn't just leave her home alone, could they? It wasn't enough that they had all that land to call their own – humans had to stretch their greedy hands everywhere. There was no telling how many millions of animals had died in those miserable nets like the one that was wrapped around her entire body. There was nothing good about those creatures. They were nothing but trouble. Mikasa pulled her black tail out of the water and tried to pick at the mess of tangles around her fin.

"There's something over here!" Mikasa's body gave a jolt as she turned her head back to the shore. There were two humans standing there, and they had clearly already seen her. The mermaid just slumped against the rock in defeat. She was too weak to stand any chance of outspeeding them, and they were much faster in the shallow water than she way. In deep water, she could have just dived to escape them, but she didn't have the option here. She just turned away from them and flattened herself against the rock.

Mikasa could feel her heartrate accelerate as the footsteps behind grew closer. She closed her ebony eyes. Her mind was swimming with all the horror stories she'd heard about situation like this, of what a human would do to a mermaid if they ever found one. It was anything from being eaten, to being put on display, to being experimented on.

"What the hell," she heard one of them breathe, as if in strong disbelief. Wearily, she looked up at the creatures standing over her. As far as Mikasa could tell, they were both male. One was blond, the other brunette, but they both had curious, shocked expressions on their faces.

"And there's your _dolphin_, Eren," the blond one said triumphantly. "I don't know about you, but that looks like no dolphin I've ever seen." Eren ignored his friend.

"What the hell am I looking at?" he asked instead. Through her fear, Mikasa felt a small surge of irritation – he was looking at her like she was some kind of an alien. "Can you speak?" he asked her. The mermaid remained silent for the time being, deciding that was her best option in the circumstances. They would be less interested in her if they thought she was some stupid creature.

"Of course she can!" the blond snapped at Eren, kneeling down in the water right next to Mikasa. "She is part human, after all." The boy's eager blue eyes bore straight into her black ones.

"She might not be able to understand us, Armin," Eren muttered. "Or, she might just be stupider than you think." Mikasa glared up at the brunette, but Armin's grin just widened.

"Did you see that?" he practically sang. "You're insulting her. She just glared at you. Clearly, she can understand what you just said." Armin's eyes were as bright as could be. "So, at the very least, she can understand human speech. Are you a mammal?" he suddenly blurted out. "Do you lay eggs?" Mikasa felt her entire body recoil in disgust at the boy's lack of tact. She almost told him off, but bit her tongue. Clearly, Armin saw her reaction and pushed harder. "So, you do? How are they fertilized?" Mikasa's black eyes widened in both shock and anger. She felt her tail flex agitatedly. "Is it internal, or external, like a fish?" Without any warning, Mikasa covered the annoying human in water, kicked up by her fin.

"I'm not a fish!" she snapped at him. Armin was knocked back by the force, but climbed back onto his knees, his face twisted into a bigger grin than ever.

"So, you can talk!" In the background, Eren was laughing hysterically.

"Armin," he chuckled, and Mikasa fixed her irritated eyes on the brunette now, "you're my friend for many reasons, but this isn't one of them." Armin frowned at him.

"Now what did I do?" Eren rolled his teal eyes.

"You've been looking for proof mermaids exist for years, and when you finally meet one, the first thing you ask her is about her reproduction. _Anyone_ would be offended by that." Now it was Armin's turn to roll his eyes.

"I can tell by looking at her that she's clearly more like a dolphin or a whale than a fish. But, she wasn't going to speak with us unless I got her to." Mikasa was now sitting upright on the rock, glaring at them both with her tail dipped in the water. "So, will you talk to us now?" he asked her softly. "We know you can speak, so there's no point in pretending that you can't understand us."

"I'm not giving you a history lesson on my people," she told him coldly. "We've been hidden from your kind this long for a reason."

"Because you don't trust us," Armin said. Mikasa just looked at him. "I can't say I blame you. We can be pretty horrible, huh? You seemed to have learned that personally." Mikasa was suddenly very self-conscious over the net tangled around her body,

"I see that you found our lost net," Eren commented, as if reading her mind. "We were out here collecting the nets left out yesterday, but I can see we caught something a bit more exciting than some tuna."

"You almost killed a dolphin with it," she told him, her tone clipped.

"And you freed it, getting yourself hopelessly tangled up in the process?" Eren asked. "That seems a little irresponsible toward your species, doesn't it?"

"Leaving it out here, when you knew it would be dangerous to some creatures is far more irresponsible," she snapped. Eren seemed unabashed.

"We have to make a living somehow." Mikasa was about to answer him, when she suddenly felt something tracing the twine around her tail. Armin was running his finger along the thick chords of the net, where they were relentlessly cutting into her scales.

"Don't touch me," she warned him, pulling her tail away from his grasp. Armin frowned at her.

"That looks painful." When the mermaid didn't respond to him, Armin looked at Eren.

"What are you thinking?" the brunette asked, his voice heavy with suspicion. His friend looked back at Mikasa for a moment.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I bet the people back at the village would be fascinated by her." Eren frowned.

"I'd be careful about that, Armin. I don't think it's a good idea to tell anyone about her." He looked back at the mermaid, who looked like she was trying to find a way to pull the netting off over her head. It was a little pathetic, really. She was so hopelessly snared in it that even Eren knew she was never getting out of it without some help. "She might be half-animal, but-" Eren was cut off by a mouthful of seawater flung in his direction.

"Don't call me 'animal'," she told him, still more focused on the net than on him. "I know it is in your nature to degrade those you consider lesser species by calling them animals, but you won't do the same to me." She finally looked at him, and her eyes were harsh. "I am part dolphin, not an animal. My people have no words like that. We respect the creatures we share the ocean with. They are what they are. A fish is a fish and a whale is a whale. If you are going to refer to me in such a way, call yourself an animal as well, because you are no more important to this world than I am, _human_." With that, she went back to playing with the ropes.

"Well, she told you," Armin snickered.

"Shut up," Eren snapped at him. "My point was, she may not be human, but she's still close enough like us. Who knows what would happen if the wrong person knew she was here? They'd take her and put her in a tank somewhere, if she wasn't dissected or experimented on. You know that, Armin." Armin looked back at the dark-haired mermaid who was watching them again carefully. She seemed to be defensive again, but he could see that she was more leery of them now than she had been earlier. Eren suddenly reached over toward her, grasping a handful of the loose netting around her stomach. She tried to move away from him, but he held it firmly and met her frightened black eyes

"Take it easy," he told her gently. "We want to help you." The mermaid lashed out at Eren's legs with her powerful black tail, sending him toppling over straight into the water.

"I don't need your help," she informed him.

"For someone who claims to be part dolphin," Eren seethed, glaring at the girl, "you're as stupid as a fish!" That got the mermaid's full attention and she looked like she was ready to attack him. She slipped off her rock and advanced on Eren.

"Hey, Jaeger!" Armin tore his eyes away from the impending fight and toward the shore, where he could see Jean a fair distance from where they were standing. Without thinking, Armin threw himself on top of the mermaid, pinning her face-first under the water. Eren looked at him in confusion.

"Jean!" the blond hissed. "Get her tail!" Eren's eyes followed Armin's. He noticed that the mermaid's tail was thrashing around wildly. The brunette quickly sat down on top of the tail, so that the creature under them was still squirming, but it wasn't noticeable from the surface.

"What the hell are you two doing?" Jean snapped at them when he was close enough to not have to yell. He didn't look like he was eager to follow them into the water, though. Eren glared at him.

"We're on a date and you're not invited, so fuck off."

"Armin is dating Annie," he stated.

"Yeah, and she's about to join us for a session of skinnydipping. If you saw her like that, she'd kick your ass. So beat it before I do the honors for her." Jean turned and started to walk away in announce.

"Fuck off, Jaeger!" They waited several minutes to make sure Jean was gone before letting the mermaid up. By that point, she'd stopped struggling.

"Alright," Eren muttered before she could start bitching at them again, as he grabbed a piece of the net toward her head as to avoid her tail and dragged her into even shallower water. He sat on top of her so that her face was glaring right up at his. "Look," he told her, "I am cutting that net off. No more games."

"I don't want your help," she snapped at him, still indignant over being tackled, then dragged around like she was a sack. "Get off me."

"I didn't ask if you wanted my help or not," he muttered, as Armin handed him a pair of scissors they used for situations like this... well, not quite like this, but for tangled nets. "You _need_ my help, and you're getting it. I don't care what you want, so just sit there and shut up."

Eren was careful as he began to cut the tendrils of rope wrapped around the mermaid's body. His hands and touch were gentle, and he took great care to touch her bare skin as little as possible. However, some areas of the net was cutting deeply into her flesh and it became inevitable when he came to her shoulders. He was surprised to find that she felt very human. It wasn't rubbery like a dolphin.

The mermaid watched him with her calm black eyes as he cut the last of the netting off of her torso. Really, even Eren had to admit that she was quite beautiful. The charcoal color of her tail matched her eyes perfectly, and they made her pale white skin even more distinct. Even the way the sun reflected off her translucent fins was somewhat appealing. Slowly, Eren ran his hands to her tail. He was a bit leery of moving to her tail, as he could tell that the twine was much tighter and deeper, and probably considerably more painful.

"I'm going to try and get this off, okay? If it hurts, just let me know, merm-"

"Mikasa," she cut him off softly. Eren looked at her. "My name is Mikasa." The boy gave her a smile as he stood off her and grabbed the first bit of net wrapping her tail. It went smooth and easy until he got to her fins. Her scales were as black as midnight, so he hadn't noticed until his hand was covered with a red fluid that she was bleeding. Eren wasn't exactly an expert with that kind of stuff, but his father had been a doctor before he had died and he knew that wasn't good for her circulation, if the cords were tight enough to cause bleeding. And it didn't take a lot to realize that her tail was an important part of her biology. It took a few minutes and Mikasa groaned a bit, but soon the last bit of rope fell from her body.

"Does that feel better?" he asked her as she slowly began to wiggle her tail around. Mikasa nodded.

"Thank you," she said softly, but made no attempt to move away from them. That seemed to throw the two boys off. "I can't go home," she told them.

"Why?" Armin asked. Mikasa sighed.

"I'm exhausted. Between trying to escape that net, than fighting with you two, I wouldn't trust myself to get home. If I get too tired, I could drown."

"Drown?" Eren asked. "Don't you have gills?"

"No, I _don't_," she told him, her tone somewhat threatening. "I'm a mammal, not a fish."

"So, you need to stay here for a while?" Armin asked her. Mikasa nodded.

"At least until I have the strength to swim home. It's a long trip with this tail."

"Alright," Armin said simply, "we'll watch out for you until you're rested enough to make the trip home." He grinned at the confused look that crossed Mikasa's face. "That is, as long you trust us."

"I might," she responded, knowing that was lie as she said it. Yeah, she definitely trusted these humans, but she wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.


End file.
